It is better, in short, that what is well judged in action should not owe its successful issue to the aid of chance.

Exercise thyself in these and kindred precepts day and night, both by thyself and with him who is like unto thee; then never, either in waking or in dream, wilt thou be disturbed, but wilt live as a god among men. For man loses all semblance of mortality by living in the midst of immortal blessings.

Elsewhere he rejects the whole of divination,This short note on divination is clumsily inserted between the last words of the epistle and the expositor’s natural reference to other works of Epicurus treating of ethics; Usener conjectures that it may have come from a Scholium attached to the epistle. as in the short epitome, and says, No means of predicting the future really exists, and if it did, we must regard what happens according to it as nothing to us.

Such are his views on life and conduct; and he has discoursed upon them at greater length elsewhere.